In American History, whistle blowers have played a significant role in releasing information the government holds from the public eye but many are not sure whether to call this activity an act of kindness or an act of selfishness. Whistleblowers throughout the years, from the Rosenberg's to Julian Assange have revealed confidential information about the governent to give America some type of justice but instead for most of them this didn't turn out to be the case. It is debated whether some whistleblowers should be classified as heros or villans and if whistleblowing acts should be considered helpful or harmful. The whistleblower I will be talking about in this essay is Edward Snowden and how he released information about the NSA's spying program. In my opinion I believe Edward Snowden did way more harm than good to America by releasing secure information held by the NSA. A whistleblower is a person who exposes wrongful information that goes on in a organization. Mainly, whistleblowers reach out to parties that can publicize this new found information. These parties include the media, hotlines, members of politics, managers of organizations, other rival businesses and other sources. In most cases the information revealed by the whistleblower goes against a law and harms the public in one way or another. Edward Snowden is a former CIA technical assistant who has claimed responsibility for leaking headline-making information about the National Security Agency's (NSA) surveillance program. He revealed that the NSA has records of majority of calls made in America, including those who are making and receiving the calls phone number, conversations between people in emails, on Twitter, Facebook etc. They also have huge amounts of data on the internet including history in web searches and websites. There are many reasons why Edward Snowden’s actions were unethical. The first of these is that Edward Snowden took an oath of loyalty for holding information for the NSA to himself. Alot of people relied on him, Instead of being loyal he committed a crime. Any government employee is warned repeatedly that the disclosure of information without the government knowing is a crime. For him to accuse the government of doing illegal action while him himself is doing illegal actions is more than him contradicting himself. It's serious when person who works for an intelligence agency and signs documents agreeing to keep things secret reveals those secrets. He thought that giving out the government’s information would help the country when instead he hurt it. He gave the NSA a bad name when they are actually trying to help America. He also shared information about the NSA's plans with other countries like China & Russia. Another reason he shouldn't have revealed any information is because the NSA's actions were constitutional and didn't violate any individuals rights if they felt that that was case. The NSA claims authorities can only target people who are non-U.S. citizens and non-permanent residents, and those who are overseas. There was no straight forward violation of the constitution because the Fourth Amendment does not protect dialed phone numbers, because people automatically lose privacy over those numbers when they are given to the phone company. The Constitution protects the content of the communications, whether it be a phone call, e-mail, or old-fashioned letter. Also Congress approved a change to the FISA statute to allow collections of such sort. The last reason that I feel Edward Snowden should have kept this information to himself was because he set the NSA to make it look like they were not helping out America when in reality the NSA has prevented 50 potential terror attacks in 20 countries since 2001, including plots such as the case of Najibullah Zazi, who in 2009 plotted to bomb the New York subway system, a case involving David Headley, a man who helped plan the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack, a case involving a purported plot to attack the New York Stock Exchange and the case of Basaaly Moalin, a man convicted of sending $8,500 to Somalia to support Al Shabab, the terrorist group that has taken responsibility for the attack on a Kenyan mall. Some have complained that these programs have given the government too much power to monitor people around the world. According to the NSA only certain people have access to the information, while said the courts have found people cannot have a reasonable expectation of privacy as to who and when they call. Other people may feel that the government should be spying on your call records when really they only collect information from those calling outside the US. Lastly some may argue that Edward Snowden went against his sworn oath the protect us but if a whistleblower like himself can't even be trusted to have a company such as the NSA's back who's to say that he can have millions of Americans backs. In conclusion, Edward Snowden had no business revealing information about the NSA that really made no change to America and the NSA's plans. Instead he angered a lot of people and he has to be kept in hiding for security reasons. If he would of kept things to himself he would still have a job and the NSA would have a better chance at preventing more terrorist attacks but the fact that millions of people now feel like they are being spied on it makes the task a bit more difficult since Americans now don't trust the NSA's actions even though the actions are all constitutional. Sometimes it's better to keep things to yourself for the sake of you and the others that can be affected by it tremendously.